Wednesday, July 08, 2015

Meanwhile, in an Alternate Universe…

This video would be funny if it wasn’t so damn accurate. After this past weekend of badass female accomplishment (which I never want to end – can my Twitter and Tumblr feeds to always just be joyous pictures of the U.S. Women’s National Team?), it’s easy to forget the sorry state of things. Never mind that we’re 52 percent of the whole damn population. Never mind that the Women’s World Cup was the most-watched soccer game in U.S. history (and had more viewers than both the final World Series game and final NBA championship game – both played by dudes). Never mind that six of the Top 10 highest-grossing movies at the box office so far this year are female-led (or co-led). Never mind all of that. Because inevitably it always boils down to some dumb notion that women’s worth has something to do with her attractiveness.

But don’t take my word for it. Listen to “Jane the Virgin” star Gina Rodriguez break it down for you. (Fast-forward to the 3:15 mark for the pertinent comments. Or read the whole roundtable interview here.)

My favorite thing about this whole discussion were the reactions of these very talented, very smart, very fed-up women to Gina’s story. Like, yep, doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter what we do as long as we look pretty for the goddamn fucking magazine cover.

Don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here in the corner rubbing my 78-cents for every dollar a man makes together and screaming internally to myself. Well, at least we get a ticker-tape parade on Friday. At least there’s that.

Years ago when we went voting I told my younger brother that I thought he should vote for a woman. He said something about feminism, clearly without any clear understanding of what it meant. I explained to him how women are underrepresented in parliament and that feminism only means that women should have equal rights, not better rights or more rights than men. He could not argue with that. I am so proud that now when we go voting, my brothers pick out only women from the list of candidates without any need to remind them. They even tell their friends to do the same.

There's a long way to go, but we can teach people one at a time and slowly make progress.